Pizza Hut co-founder dies at the age of 82.

Frank Carney dies from pneumonia

Frank Carney, co-founder of Pizza Hut died at the age of 82 from pneumonia on Wednesday. He died at 4.30am at an assisted living facility in Wichita, Janie Carney, his wife told the Wichita Eagle. Carney had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and had recently recovered from COVID-19.

In 1958, Frank Carney was a 19-year-old student at Wichita State University who along with his brother Dan Carney, 26-year-old then, started a pizza business.  The duo borrowed $600 from their mother for a pizza start up near their family’s Carney’s Market.

“When you start a business that’s going to pay your way through college, you don’t even think about what the economy is doing,” Carney once said in a 1992 entrepreneurship conference at Wichita State. He further said, “We didn’t care about who was in the White House or what the unemployment rate was. The entrepreneur, all he thinks about is: Is there a market for the product? Can I sell it?”

In 1977, PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut for $300 million. Over the years, he got involved in several business ventures, including real estate, oil & gas, rental and recreational business, automotive and other food companies. “He probably lost most of what he had made in Pizza Hut. He was not depressed. He was just aggressive to build something different,” said Dan Carney.

According a report of December 2019, Pizza Hut has over 18,703 outlets across the globe, making it one of the largest pizza chains in the world today.Pizza Hut co-founder died at the age of 82.